iCandy - the best Apple concept mockups. Despite the huge number of 3d rendered mockups of Apple products on the web, few even come close to genuine Apple design. The exceptions seem to be Isamu Sanada and Yann Le Coroller, who between them account for the majority of well executed 3rd party concepts. Here are our favorites, and why we chose them. Vote for yours.

whenever I look at one of the many iPhone mockups that consist entirely of a screen, I wish that Steve Jobs buttonaphobia hadnt extended to getting rid of the button on the iPhone.<p /><p />The framing around the iPhone looks ill proportioned because it is very narrow on two sides and deep at the top and bottom. This entirely bezel free mockup, is exactly what I wish the iPhone looked like.

i seems almost perverse that the iPod shuffle, which is almost as small as the iPod navigation buttons, should be rectangular.<p /><p />This mockup where the shuffle is like an interactive coin, seems logical and elegant.

Superslick screen as keyboard concepts are currently doing the rounds. No matter how attractive they are, they make for a very expensive, inferior keyboard, and only make sense where the keyboard is in the main screen.<p /><p />If, however the Macbook air had an all black bezel-less screen and black on black, gloss keyboard and looked something like this, it would have been a thing of beauty.<p />

If sufficiently good stereo Bluetooth earbuds can be developed, it will allow for a resurgence of the wrist watch as a form factor for a multitude of iPod like devices.<p /><p />This mockup doesnt seem quite there, but is the best Apple wristwatch concept currently around.

No doubt this great mockup wont get as many votes as it deserves, because it doesnt ape the current vogue in Apple design. However, i have always preferred the white plastic Apple designs to the brushed metal look. This is a very thorough look at what Apple could have done to better the Eee.

While the iPhone keyboard is a valiant attempt, a real keyboard would be more useful and ironically would allow the front face to be even more minimalist, removing the need for any buttons.<p /><p />This iPod mockup would make a reasonable iPhone. I am just waiting for the SDK and hoping that slick keyboard/protective-case combos are around the corner.

This mockup of the Air, prior to its announcement is, in many ways more satisfying than the final product.<p /><p />Although the trackpad would be unusable, it would certainly be a good idea to integrate the mouse button within the trackpad surface itself.<p /><p />A machine such as this would have possibly been a better form factor, since thinness, however seductive, is ultimately not as important as overall size. UMPCs like the Asus Eee look like they have gotten the form factor right, yet despite the obvious attraction of the product, the Eee is shoddy in terms of industrial design. Apple could do better.

The iSleight is another parody product that we actually like. Recently apple have been creating LEDs that are invisible through metal, until illuminated. The iSleight has a through plastic invisible display, something that would be great on screenless shuffle replacements that still required menus.

The iVault was a prescient mockup - since Time Capsule is basically this with one massive problem. iTunes libraries are a bitch to move around unless you run iTunes on the backup machine itself, making a Mac mini a much better product than Time Capsule for media files and S3 a better product for documents.<p /><p />In some ways the iVault is not really about hardware, you could argue that the ultimate in minimalist storage is Amazon S3, where the hardware literally vanishes.<p /><p />The problem is that Sneakernets are making their way back, as video files mean that backing up your iTunes to S3 would take days - making something like the iVault attractive.

The idea of taking the iMac and making it into a luggable seems like a realtively practical idea, but not one that is likely to happen.<p /><p />I can imagine something along the lines of this, with an aluminum cover with embedded keyboard, like a Haliburton case.

For those that think that skinny laptops are a recent obsession, this is from 1998. <p />Even then there were super small laptops like Sonys original Vaios which were not that different to look at, from todays offerings.

This mockup by Neil Pomerleau was amazingly prescient of the iPod touch - even including the strapline, &quot;touch your music&quot;. It was produced before the launch of the iPod Touch in September 2007.<p /><p />When it was posted the general sentiment was that Apple would not cannibalize existing iPod sales with an iPhone like player, and that it would certainly not be called the iPod Touch.